I grew up within the San Gabriel Valley — additionally known as SGV or the 626 — an ethnoburb in Los Angeles County the place Asian immigrants go to by no means assimilate. Immigrants within the Nineteen Seventies, initially principally Chinese language, constructed our personal ethnic economic system and ecosystem in SGV, with Chinese language banks, grocery shops and hair salons, and Chinese language-language colleges on Saturday mornings for ABC (American-born Chinese language) youngsters. I grew up with two Wing Hop Fung retailers a 10-minute drive away from our one-story, three-bedroom house within the ethnoburb.
Wing Hop Fung was the place I fabricated tales in my head about my mother being a Chinese language herb witch as I watched her collect pungent, brightly coloured seeds and crops to gradual cook dinner medicinal stews that will restore my yin and “undo the consequences of all of the fried rooster and pizza I ate at Jessica’s birthday celebration final weekend.” Dr. Lee offered psychiatry providers in Mandarin, Cantonese and Toisan down the road. The Chinese language Baptist church held worship providers, Sunday college and weekly Bible examine in English, Mandarin and Cantonese across the nook. 99 Ranch, Rapidly and King Hua for the perfect dim sum exterior of Hong Kong have been all in our ZIP Code. Throughout the road from King Hua was Costco, which carried mooncakes, lap cheong and dehydrated sea cucumber in bulk (hoarding dehydrated sea cucumber is seemingly a love language of immigrant dads).
All the things we wanted was within the ethnoburb. Even so, once I was youthful, naive and presumptuous, I discovered it embarrassing, “too ethnic.” I didn’t see the way it instructed a narrative of resistance and rebirth, for Southern California and my household.
From the start of World Struggle II till the Sixties, Monterey Park, the origin of the San Gabriel Valley as an ethnoburb, prospered as some of the inexpensive white suburban communities. The wartime economic system introduced transplants from throughout the nation to Southern California, and Monterey Park turned an rising website of snug single-family houses and manicured inexperienced lawns. Postwar Monterey Park remained predominantly white however started to attract upwardly cellular Mexican, Japanese and Chinese language People from totally different ethnic enclaves round Los Angeles, together with East Los Angeles, the Westside and Chinatown.
In a time of charged debate and political wrestle round race, segregation and housing rights in California and throughout the nation, Asian People and Mexican People approached house shopping for in Monterey Park cautiously by gathering intel from intra-ethnic networks and assessing the attitudes of native actual property brokers. It helped that a lot of these trying to purchase houses in Monterey Park have been second- or third-generation immigrants: educated, acculturated and pursuing the dream of suburban life. As a result of they’d social and monetary capital and have been few sufficient in numbers, they have been perceived as much less threatening to present white political, institutional and cultural dominance in Monterey Park.
Nonetheless, a lot of them nonetheless skilled racial discrimination on the time of their more and more built-in social worlds. And Black People continued to face overt and violent resistance to house shopping for and integration. Geographer Wendy Cheng notes in her ebook “The Changs Subsequent Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California” that anti-Black racism allowed Asian American and Mexican People to buy houses and settle in Monterey Park, whereas Black Angelenos have been frequently hyper-segregated in South Central Los Angeles and precluded from shopping for within the suburbs.
White suburban residents went to nice lengths to exclude Black People from shifting in, whereas slowly (begrudgingly) permitting Asian People and Mexican People to take up residence. In 1960, white residents made up 85.6% of Monterey Park, Latinos 11.6%, Asian People 2.8% and Black People 0.04%. By 1970, Monterey Park turned the primary ethnically diverse middle-class suburb within the nation, with white folks holding a majority at 50.5%, Latinos at 34%, Asian People at 15.3% and Black People hovering at 0.2%.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, my popo, who was in her 70s, relocated from Hong Kong to affix us in San Gabriel. As she and her husband ready to retire and cool down in Hong Kong, he as a substitute determined to begin a brand new household with a lady a long time youthful with whom he’d had a secret affair for nearly 10 years. With out choices and overwhelmed by disgrace, my popo left her house, her residence the place she had raised three youngsters along with her ex-husband, and her mah-jongg group in Hong Kong to dwell with us. She began over in a international place the place she couldn’t converse the language, didn’t have friends and couldn’t get round. She was remoted and heartbroken.
With barely a kindergarten schooling, her life ambition had been to change into a spouse and a mom. In true Cantonese matriarch vogue, she bragged incessantly to her social circles about her husband’s and kids’s accomplishments. Now, with three grownup youngsters with households of their very own, she was not wanted as a mom, not a spouse and shamed by her group. Once I was a baby, she would insist, “Your popo has change into a ineffective nothing.”
It perplexed me as a result of I by no means noticed her that means. Getting left by her husband didn’t grow to be the tip of her story.
With the security internet of the ethnoburb, my popo rebuilt. After residing with us for a number of years, she moved into her personal one-bedroom residence on Principal Avenue in neighboring Alhambra. She walked to 85 Levels on a regular basis, the place they rang a cowbell every time recent baos got here out of the oven. She made mates with Cantonese neighbors in her constructing, they usually began their very own mah-jongg group at which they might debrief the most recent episode of whichever Cantonese drama had aired on TVB the earlier evening. She discovered a Cantonese church and received baptized. She by no means realized English. She drove recklessly within the 99 Ranch parking zone and didn’t care. She could have confirmed a number of stereotypes, however the ethnoburb saved her. She stayed unapologetically herself via the upheavals of divorce and displacement. Within the security internet of SGV, she received her groove again.
Generally my mother would take my popo out to go window-shopping in Beverly Hills and they’d drag me alongside. For me as a baby, Popo exterior of the ethnoburb was a daunting, multisensory expertise. She at all times introduced her full self. She was massive and in cost. She tried to cut price and make offers. In Cantonese. At Saks. Her voice and presence have been at all times loud, even and particularly after we have been the one Asians round. You don’t converse Cantonese? Too unhealthy and sit tight: 626 or 90210, my popo didn’t code change.
I, alternatively, began my PhD in code switching once I was 9, after transferring to an uppity, predominantly white personal college. I noticed Popo as an unassimilable twister that left me within the mud, embarrassed and flustered.
Now, having moved away from the San Gabriel Valley for over 10 years to self-actualize in additional “attention-grabbing” areas, I discover myself longing to return. Paying exorbitant lease to dwell someplace fashionable is overrated and unsustainable. I would like Asian strip malls, I would like Hong Kong cafes and I would like my baby to develop up listening to Cantonese commonly and know that we’re not yelling; that’s simply our default quantity.
As my popo did, I embrace my ethnoburb — in all of its limitations, potentialities and unassimilability.
Bianca Mabute-Louie is a sociologist and the writer of the forthcoming ebook “Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the 21st Century,” from which this piece is customized, copyright 2025 by Bianca Mabute-Louie. To be revealed by Harper, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.
